IF PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, DOES THAT MEAN I AM WICKED?

A few years back, my husband and I bought a Prius.  The following year, a close friend bought one too.  One day, when I was pondering where to store emergency supplies in our car, this friend suggested I put them in the hidden area under the trunk’s floor.

Hidden area?  I didn’t know there was a hidden area.

When I asked her how she knew about this, she told me she had read the manual. What a concept.  I have never read a car’s manual, except to look up how to perform a particular function or to find out why there is suddenly an alarming-looking exclamation point on my dashboard   There are probably many features of my car (and past cars) that I know (or have known) nothing about.

Here’s the thing.  I have a teensy problem with impatience.  Sitting and reading through a car manual is beyond my patience limits.  Same with reading directions.  Sure, I can read and follow a recipe (if, and when, I feel like cooking), but carefully reading about how to put together something like a bookcase or a desk that arrives in pieces in a box – I just can’t make myself do it.  

In my defense, the directions are often badly translated from Japanese or Swedish.  And don’t get me started on the diagrams.  But even if they were written in perfect English, with diagrams aimed at a third grader, I would be unlikely to get beyond the first page before my eyes glazed over.  

 

I am not proud of my impatience.  I know it isn’t attractive.  It gets me into trouble with my husband sometimes – he being a slow-talking Midwesterner, and I being a fast-talking Jersey girl.  “Are you going to finish your sentence?” I will ask when he takes one of his 10 to 15-second pauses mid-thought.  

Not nice, I know, but I feel like my idle is set too fast, and I don’t know how to reset it.  (Is there a manual for this?)

Sometimes—to my detriment—I combine impatience with procrastination.  I can’t make myself pack for a trip ahead of time.  I wait until the last minute when I don’t have the time or patience to do it right.  In consequence, I will wind up throwing way too many of the wrong clothes into a suitcase and hoping for the best.  (I have done better with infrequent trips abroad – for these, I make myself decide which five things I will wear for two weeks.  But, car trips, fuggedaboudit – there is no limit to what can be jammed into a car.)

 

And while I am confessing, I will share that I am extremely impatient when I am sick.  My husband will simply sit and read when he is under-the-weather.  Not me.  I will chafe against my restrictions until impatience turns to panic, as I become certain that I will never feel well again.  

Why can’t I be more like him?  (If patience is my spiritual lesson for this lifetime, I may have to live another hundred years, and there is no guarantee that would be long enough.)  

There are, however, occasions for what I will call justified impatience.  These include long lines at stores that have fired most of their checkers and replaced them with self-checkout stands; waiting on hold with a company that refuses to hire enough humans to service their customers; phone trees with no humans at the end; phone helpers who have neither answers nor power; and companies whose only phone help is a recording telling you to search their web site, which, of course, does not have the answer to your question. I will not apologize for my impatience in these situations, although I do try not to take out my frustration on the aforementioned phone helpers.  

Justified impatience aside, I do get this patience thing right at times.  I have endless patience for my granddaughters, aged one and one-and-a-half.  I am charmed when they hand me things over-and-over again or want me to read the same book multiple times.  I was patient and present during my years as a hospice volunteer.  I am never bored in my garden, where my back gives out long before my patience, and I can sit for a long time once I get going on a writing project.  

That’s a start, isn’t it?  

I’ll report back in a hundred years . . .

                                               Art by Carl Chew
 

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I CURSE YOU MICROSOFT

A while back, I heard someone on the radio talking about what she called “shadow work.”  She used this term to describe the unpaid hours we spend on work that someone else used to do for us.

As an example she mentioned vacation planning, lamenting the loss of travel agents. Without these intermediaries, we must now spend hours squinting at our computer screens, trying to put together the "best deal" for our next trip. 

Yesterday I spent 3 hours on shadow work of a different kind.  Today I spent 40 minutes.  All of this on the phone with Microsoft trying to resolve an issue with Word.

I won’t bore you with the nature of the problem.  I will share that it took me nearly an hour of answering questions from a robot, pushing various numbers on my phone, listening to horrible tinny music and messages suggesting I look for my answer online, to get a message telling me a human would call me in 20 minutes.  (Of course, I had already tried to find the answer up online – why did they think I was calling?!)

When, after more than 20 minutes, I got the call back, I first answered more robot questions, then was handed over to a human who asked the same questions AGAIN, then put me on hold (where I waited through more horrible tinny music and suggestions that I look up my answer online), while I was transferred to another human because the first human dealt only with Windows and I have a Mac.  

After the second human repeated the same questions, I, holding my phone to my ear attempted to keep up with his instructions using one hand, then switched to holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder – not easy to do with a cell phone.  Eventually, I allowed him to commandeer my mouse so he could fix the problem.  After he uninstalled Office and sold me a new version, we waited for the purchase to download.  When a message said download would take 40 minutes, I agreed he could tell me what to do when the download was complete, and we both got off the phone

By now, two more hours had elapsed. 

When the download was complete, I followed the instructions the second human had given.  

Alas, when I opened Word, MY PROBLEM HAD NOT BEEN RESOLVED. *

I wanted to weep.  Or scream.  

I did neither.  I called a friend and vented, then took an Epsom salt bath (the phone-holding with the shoulder having left me with a sore neck and back). I lay in the tub fondly remembering my electric typewriter, which had never demanded more of me than a new ribbon.  And then I remembered carbon paper and Wite-Out, and had to acknowledge that word processing was a life changer.

I called Microsoft again this morning – this time I knew which buttons to push to get a human, but I still got a Windows human and had to be transferred to a Mac human and I still had to answer robot questions and the same questions from each human.  

Doesn’t anyone take notes?

By the time I got to human number two, I was just the teensiest bit testy.  My mood was not improved by the fact that I could barely hear her over the voices of the other phone helpers, one of whom was talk/yelling so loudly that I wondered why he needed a phone. 

I am sorry to say I was not nice.  I am not proud of the version of myself I showed to her.  I know none of this was her problem, but a person can just take so much.

I am happy to say she solved my problem.  I am sorry to say it took another 40 minutes.  

Each human was very nice.  Each was so sorry for my inconvenience.  Each kindly told me I was entitled to free tech support any time I need it.  

Seriously?  

If it’s going to take 3 hours and 40 minutes of telephone torture for them to resolve a tech problem, I want more than free tech support.  

I want house calls.  

I want to be reimbursed for my time.

I want a gift certificate for a massage to ease my tensed up shoulders and neck.

I want phone trees to be outlawed.

I want to put Bill Gates in a room and make him listen to Microsoft’s robot voice repeating the same message over and over and over again – with an occasional break for horrible music.  

Look, I know Microsoft isn't the only culprit.  But it was the culprit yesterday and today, so it gets my wrath.

I'm on to you companies that use phone trees.  I know you know that phone trees and long wait times and robot voices are crazy-making.  I know you know you don't have enough people to answer your phones and don't intend to hire more.  I know you are hoping I will get so frustrated that I will go away and live with my problem. 

Shame on you!

I also know this is a First World problem.  I know I am lucky to have a computer and a house to keep it in and a cell phone with which to seek technical support.  The thing is, I live in the First World and, in order to function well here and do what I do, which includes a lot of writing, I need word processing.  And it shouldn’t take nearly 4 hours of my time for Microsoft to fix, or help me to install, its product.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this rant.  I am sure you all have stories of your own.  I’d like to hear them.  

Misery loves company.  



* I don't blame the underpaid human.  He could only do so much over the phone.

WHY DO THEY DO THAT???

After six decades on this earth, I find that Guy Noir is not the only one with persistent questions.  Here are some of mine:

Why do:

- men assume that they get all of the space in an airplane row of seats? 

OK.  OK.  Maybe women do this sometimes too, but in my experience it has always been men.*  I am not talking here about the dilemma posed by sharing a row with a large person. I am talking about the average-sized man who sits down in his seat and  immediately spreads his knees apart as far as they will go and plops his elbows on both arm rests.  Were these guys raised by wolves?  Oh.  Wait.  I have no reason to believe that wolves have such bad manners.

            *Of course, there was the time when I sat down next to a very young woman on a bus, and found to my dismay that it was not going to occur to her to uncross her stiletto-clad left foot from the top of her right knee, where it remained poised to attack my left knee for the entire trip. . . .

- store clerks refer to the inventory as if they own it?   

So, you walk up to a store clerk and ask, “Where are the frozen peas?” and the clerk responds, “My peas are on aisle three toward the back, or “I am out of frozen peas, but I have some nice fresh asparagus.”  Really?  Does s/he think that I will believe that s/he owns the store, but comes in to stock the shelves in order to stay in touch with the little people? 

-  store clerks ask for a phone number?

Really?  Any phone number?  It doesn’t have to be mine?

- store clerks ask for the “last four of your social”?

Not sure what this means, but it sounds personal. 

- radio stations announce that “meteorologist Joe/Jane Blow is calling for torrential rain/tornados/(fill in your weather horror of choice here)”?

I get that meteorologists have to predict the weather, however ugly, but why would anyone employ a meteorologist who calls for ugly weather?

- people leave their engines running while waiting for a bridge-lift to be over?

These events usually last at least ten minutes. This is not the Indianapolis 500, folks  – A fast take off is not imperative.

- robot voices on phone trees pretend to be real people?

Does company XYZ really think it is making this a more pleasant experience by having a recorded voice say, "I'm sorry.  I didn't get that.  Could you please repeat it?"?  If you want to make it a pleasant experience, how about HIRING SOME REAL PEOPLE TO ANSWER THE PHONES?, she asked sweetly.  

I feel better now.  I would love to hear your persistent questions.